Is one an entrepreneur by nature? Or is it something one learns? And what can a business manager learn from an entrepreneur? What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? What makes an entrepreneur a driver of innovation and of economic development? These questions are hard to answer – and the answers not particularly interesting – when looked at purely from a theoretical point of view, because the relationships between entrepreneur and their businesses, between them and their companies’ managers and other colleagues, are made not of mechanisms of clockwork precision, but of men and of women who are anything but machines. So theory has its place, certainly, but a health dose of practice and lots and lots of stories also help to truly grasp what happens between an entrepreneur and his or her business and, above all, what it takes to be an entrepreneur in the first place.

This is what Franco Marzo’s recently published book “I – Factor. Il gene dell’imprenditore. Realizzare un’impresa: lezioni per manager” (I-Factor. The entrepreneur gene. Creating a business: Lessons for managers) is for. The “i” in “i-factor” stands for impresa, Italian for “enterprise” or “endeavour”, as well as for imprenditore, which is Italian for “entrepreneur”. The storytelling format of the book is also important and intriguing, with Marzo including anecdotes and other teachings throughout the work told by the entrepreneurs themselves as examples of excellence to be repeated. The book features both famous and not-so-famous names from Italian enterprise, some of whom have proven themselves worldwide, while others are still young and full of potential. Names such as Alberto Bombassei (Brembo), Paola Besola and Barbara Persiani (Lindostar), Cristina Calori (WP), Francesco Casoli (Elica), Ernesto Colnago (Colnago), Tony Fassina (Fassina Holding), Franco Leoni (Polonord Adeste), Gianni Mancassola (Gruppo Athena), Vainer Marchesini (Wam Group), Giorgio Minarelli (Motori Minarelli – Yamaha), Carlo Monticelli (Cicrespi), Monica Tonini and Arturo Caprio (Sice-Previt), and Marina Salamon (Altana/Doxa), all of whom have answered one question in their own way: Is there such a thing as the “i-factor” (or, perhaps, “e-factor” in English), or can we all learn to become entrepreneurs? 

I – Factor. Il gene dell’imprenditore. Realizzare un’impresa: lezioni per manager

Franco Marzo

Franco Angeli, October 2013